The Benefits of herbs and spices in food

by Ducktor on April 17th, 2005, 7:36 am

I, Sandra El Hage, would like to inform you about the release of my new scientific book entitled "The benefits of herbs and spices in food".

What we aim to study in this book are herbs and spices that have always been present around us and in our meals; but have we ever wondered what are their nutritive value and their importance in our metabolism? If they really have a role or they are just used because it is just a traditional way of using ingredients in cooking?
Herbs and spices are valuable in adding flavor to foods. Their antioxidant activity preserves foods from oxidative deterioration, increasing their shelf life; they play an important role as natural preservatives.
For instance ground black pepper has been found to reduce the lipid oxidation of cooked pork.
In addition, several antioxidants have been found isolated from spices and herbs: antioxidants play a role in the body’s defense against cardiovascular disease and intestinal cancer (black pepper, oregano, thyme, and marjoram).
Gingerol in ginger is also an intestinal stimulant and promoter of the bioactivity of drugs. A number of spices have been also identified as having antimicrobial properties.

It has been classified as "a book of interest for nutritionnist, hotel managers, college teachers, microbiologists, immunoligists, botanists, drug manufacturers and homemakers..."

This book is the volume 5 of "Advances in Medical and Veterinary Virology, Immunology and Epidemiology" series.

It is an extremely important publication for those who agree with Hippocrate's assertion "Let thy food be thy medecine"....

Last edited by Ducktor on April 18th, 2005, 2:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ducktor

welcome Sandra

by PlayTOE on April 17th, 2005, 1:11 pm

Sandra ... are you the author? It is nice to welcome authors to our pages. So far, I cannot locate any source for this publication.

Also the term ‘Elidemiology’ will be unfamiliar to most and needs a little explanation.

Re: The Benefits of herbs and spices in food

Are their properties more concentrated than what we might consider those of a "normal" food (some of us do not cook with spices at all)

Are there any negative aspects to using spices? (some normal foods can be harmful to particular aspects of the healthy working of the body so perhaps they are herbs and spices that are equally bad in particular circumstances)

Re: The Benefits of herbs and spices in food

4th is in the garbage bin. It was more overtly spam, I gather. "PlayToe" was apparently deleted, something we no longer do to accounts.

I've seen research supporting garlic as having multiple health benefits. IIRC, there's also research focusing on turmeric, cinnamon, and ginger. Ginger has shown some positive results for chemotherapy patients, in dealing with nausea. We have so much to learn, in this area.

Re: The Benefits of herbs and spices in food

It is so expensive because it is an extremely labor-intensive crop. Crocus sativa, or the saffron crocus, flowers in the fall. Each flower has three tiny, threadlike stigmas in the center. These must be removed by hand and carefully toasted to dry. According to "The Cook's Reference: Herbs and Spices by Jill Norman," more than 80,000 crocus flowers must be grown, cared for, hand-harvested and processed to make one pound of saffron.

Re: The Benefits of herbs and spices in food

It puzzled me when I was at Primary School to hear that there was a huge business in spices. We heard about the Dutch and British East India Companies and of Spice Trade routes by land across continents and by sea.

When I looked in our poorly stocked food cabinet at home in the 1940s, I could see pepper, nutmeg, curry and mustard, but the quantity appeared to be so small compared with the sugar, flour, jams, cereals and canned foods. Yet there seemed to be a booming international trade in spices.

I looked up Wikipedia last week and found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spice_trade - "This trade – driving the world economy from the end of the Middle Ages well into the modern times – [5] ushered in an age of European domination in the East.[6] Channels, such as the Bay of Bengal, served as bridges for cultural and commercial exchanges between diverse cultures[4] as nations struggled to gain control of the trade along the many spice routes."

And incidentally found this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company - "By 1803, at the height of its rule in India, the British East India company had a private army of about 260,000—twice the size of the British Army.[5] The company eventually came to rule large areas of India with its private armies, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions."

A private company had an army of 260,000 personnel at one time! They certainly took trade with the East seriously.

Apart from that little bit of trivia, the explanation for the huge trade in spices and herbs may have something to do with imagined or real health benefits, but the general consensus at my young age was that at a time when there was no refrigeration, most meats were a bit 'on the turn' after a day or two. Therefore it was almost necessary to flavour any meat dishes with spices to mask the bad taste. That made sense to me.

People would not have had access to ice chests till well into the 19th century.

Re: The Benefits of herbs and spices in food

When I took an upper level class in college about sugar and slavery I similarly discovered so much to the industry. It's interesting reading old ship cargo manifests. People have used those manifests for so many studies to show increases in certain spices along side world domination, slavery ports, the rise of the sugar industry, industrialization, and how it parallels, certain diseases, plagues, and what was going on in certain regions and time periods.

For someone trying to eat unprocessed whole foods in modern times, it can be easy to understand why spices offers importance to dietary palate. Not to mention how back then, spices were part of "medical industry" science which was basically generational knowledge passed on to cure illnesses.

Re: The Benefits of herbs and spices in food

A great book to check out is An Infinity of Things How Sir Henry Wellcome Collected the World. How an ordinary man went on to pursue a career in pharmaceuticals which then lead him to become wealthy and on a quest using his wealth to obtain medical related (including spice trades and ancient remedies and then just anything) artifacts from around the entire world. He employed entire crews searching the world for artifacts and crews to catalog the warehouses of objects he ended up with. His ambition was far larger than his lifespan which lead him to die well before he completed his mission which resulted in only a tiny fraction of the artifacts and knowledge he collected ending up in museums while the rest was never cataloged rendering it worthless or perished in decomposition and poor warehouse conditions. It is heartbreaking how much of it was lost but thankful that at least a lot of it was saved.

Re: The Benefits of herbs and spices in food

Are their properties more concentrated than what we might consider those of a "normal" food (some of us do not cook with spices at all)

Are there any negative aspects to using spices? (some normal foods can be harmful to particular aspects of the healthy working of the body so perhaps they are herbs and spices that are equally bad in particular circumstances)

Using a website like nutrition data you can see that spices will come up near the top of nutrient searches depending on what nutrient you are looking for. If you compare 100 grams of a spice (like paprika) to 100 grams of an "ordinary" food you will see things like how paprika has 1055% the daily value of Vitamin A for an example. Of course people don't eat equal portions of spices as they do foods like carrots, rice, or obviously a processed food. Processed food makers will often fortify foods with nutrients in an attempt to make them more real. It gets more complicated than this if you look into other compounds and then how foods grown in nutrient poor soils will be nutrient deficient.

Re: The Benefits of herbs and spices in food

Was recently ill with an inner ear problem, which made me profoundly nauseated - I'm talking about the turning green and wishing for death level on the nauseometer. One bite of crystallized ginger (the good stuff, not that adulterated ginger candy junk) and I was feeling okay in about 30 minutes. Still had the vertigo but the stomach no longer minded. Was eating lunch within a couple hours. Ginger beats Meclizine HCl anytime. Without the nausea and vomiting, the brain can fairly quickly adjust its spatial sense and function with the vertigo - it's called "compensation.". And ginger doesn't make you drowsy or cottonmouthed. Energizes, in fact.

Re: The Benefits of herbs and spices in food

Braininvat » January 16th, 2018, 2:13 pm wrote:It is so expensive because it is an extremely labor-intensive crop. Crocus sativa, or the saffron crocus, flowers in the fall. Each flower has three tiny, threadlike stigmas in the center. These must be removed by hand and carefully toasted to dry. According to "The Cook's Reference: Herbs and Spices by Jill Norman," more than 80,000 crocus flowers must be grown, cared for, hand-harvested and processed to make one pound of saffron.

Yes, and the second most expensive may surprise you. It is vanilla. Again it is labor instensive, but instead of being because of the quantity involved, it is the long complicated process of hand pollination, growth, harvesting, and preparation.